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PHILOSOPHY 



IN 



OUTLINE. 



By W. T. HARRIS. 



(REPRINT FROM "JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.") 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 

LONDON: Trlttmer & Compagy. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by 

WM. T. HARRIS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



PHILOSOPHY IN OUTLINE. 



BEING A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE METHOD OF 

PHILOSOPHY, AND ITS RESULTS IN OBTAINING 

A VIEW OF NATURE, MAN, AND GOD. 



"Philosophy can bake no bread; bat 
she can procure for us God, Freedom , 
and Immortality. 1 '— Carafe's Transla- 



tion from Novalis. 



^ BY 



W. TYHAKKIS 



%b> 






*r 



{REPRINTED FROM THE JOURNAL <?F SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.] 



■ 






NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 

LONDON : Triibner & Company. 

Entered'according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1883, by William T. Harkis, in the Office 
of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



-© 






CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. — Introduction : Philosophy is not a Science of Things in Gen- 

EEAL, BUT A SCIENCE THAT INVESTIGATES THE PEESUPPOSITIONS OF 
EXPEEIENOE AND DI8COVEBS THE NATUEE OF THE FlEST PeINOIPLE* 

II. — Space and Time as Pbesuppositions of Expeeience. 
III. — The Theee Stages of Knowing. 
IV. — Cause and Self-Cause. 

V. — The Absolute a Peesonal Reason. 
VI. — Philosophy, Theology, and Religion. 
VII. — The Teiune Nature of God. 
VIII. — The Teue Infinite is Feee Eneegy. 
IX. — Feeedom, Fate, Individuality. 

X. — The Woeld of Natuee.awnl; Evolution. 
XI. — The Woeld of Man and 'Immoetality. 






PHILOSOPHY IN OUTLINE. 



Chaptee I. 
Introduction. 



Philosophy is not a science of things in general, but a science that investigates the pre- 
suppositions of experience and discovers the nature of the first principle. 

§ 1. Philosophy does not set up the extravagant pretension to 
know all things. It does not " take all knowledge for its province " 
any more than geology, or astronomy, or logic does. Geology 
aspires to know the entire structure of this globe ; astronomy, to 
know all the stars ; logic, to know the structure of the reasoning- & 3 
process. Philosophy attempts to find the necessary a priori ele- 
ments or factors in experience, and arrange them into a system by 
deducing them from a first principle. Not the forms of reasoning 
alone, but the forms of sense-perception, of reflection, of specu- 
lative knowing, and the very forms which condition being or exist- 
ence itself, are to be investigated. 

§ 2. The science of necessary forms is a very special science, 
because it does not concern itself with collecting and arranging 
the infinite multitude of particular objects in the world and iden- 
tifying their species and genera, as the particular sciences do. It 
investigates the presupposed conditions and ascends to the one 
supreme condition. It therefore turns its back on the multitude 
of particular things and seizes them in the unity of their " ascent 
and cause," as George Herbert names it. The particular sciences 
and departments of knowledge collect and classify and explain 
phenomena. Philosophy collects and classifies and explains their \ i 
explanations. Its province is much more harrow and special than 
theirs. If to explain meant to find the many, the different, the- 



4 Philosophy in Outline. 

particular examples or specimens, philosophy would have to take 
all knowledge for its province if it aspired to explain the explana- 
tions offered in the several sciences. But that is not its meaning 
— to explain means to find the common, the generic principle in 
the particular. This is just the opposite of that other process 
which would take all knowledge in its infinite details for its prov- 
ince. To explain all knowledge is not to know all things. 

§ 3. To illustrate Philosophic Knowing, and at the same time 
to enter its province and begin philosophizing, we shall take up 
at once a consideration of three ideas — Space, Time, and Cause. 
Space and Time — as the conditions of nature or the world, as the 
necessary presuppositions of extension and multitude — will furnish 
us occasion to consider the infinite and the possibility of knowing 
it. The idea of Cause will lead us to the fundamental insight on 
which true philosophy rests. 

Chapter II. 
Space and Time as Presuppositions of Experience. 

■§ 4. In all experience we deal with sensible objects and their 
changes. The universal condition of the existence of sensible 
objects is Space. Each object is limited or finite, but the univer- 
sal condition of the existence of objects is self-limited or infinite. 
An object of the senses possesses extension and limits, and, conse- 
quently, has an environment. We find ourselves necessitated to 
think an environment in order to think the object as a limited 
object. 

§ 5. Here we have, first the object, and secondly the environ- 
ment as mutually limiting and excluding, and as correlatives. 
But the ground or condition of both the object and its environ- 
ment is Space. Space makes both possible. 

§ 6. Space is a necessary idea. We may think this particular 
object or not — it may exist or it may not. So, too, this particular 
environment may exist or not, although some environment is neces- 
sary. But Space must exist, whether this particular object or en- 
vironment exists or not. Here we have three steps toward abso- 
lute necessity : (1) The object which is not necessary, but may or 
may not exist — may exist now, but cease after an interval ; (2) the 
-environment which must exist in some form if the object exists — 



Philosophy in Outline. 5 

a hypothetical necessity ; (3) the logical condition of the object 
and its environment, which must, as Space, exist, whether the ob- 
ject exist or not. 

§ 7. Again, note the fact that the object ceases where the envi- 
ronment begins. But space does not cease with the object nor 
with the environment ; it is continued or affirmed by each. The 
space in which the object exists is continued by the space in which 
its environment exists. Space is infinite. 

Let us consider how we know the infinitude of space, for this is 
a very important concern in philosophy. The doctrine is current 
that we cannot know the infinite, that we can form no conception 
of it. Hence the word infinite would be to us without any mean- 
ing except a negative one. 1 

§ 8. Space is both divisible (discrete) and continuous. It is 
composed of parts, each part being again composed of parts. But 
each part of space is not limited by something else ; it is limited 
only by space. The environment of any finite portion of space is 
and must be necessarily other portions of space. 

§ 9. But if any limited space has space for its environment, it is 
not limited by it, but continued by it. Any possible limited or 
finite space is continued by an environment of space, and the 
whole of space is infinite. 

§ 10. This insight into the constitution of Space is a positive 
knowledge of and an adequate conception of its infinitude, but it 
is not a mental image or picture of infinite space. Conception in 
that sense would contradict the infinitude of space, for an image 
or picture necessarily has limits or environment. But the concep- 
tion of the infinitude of space is adequate and exhaustive, because 
it enables us to answer questions relative to the conditions of 
existence in space — as the science of mathematics shows. A finite 
object could not exist were it not for this ground or condition 
which is its own environment. Self- environment is the character- 
istic of the infinite. The idea of infinite space is therefore the 
condition of the mental image or picture. 

§ 11. That which is continued by its environment might be still 



1 The argument here given I used in 1860 to refute Sir William Hamilton's " Law of 
the Conditioned." I printed it first as part of a series of philosophical articles in the 
"Boston Commonwealth" for December 18, 1863. See, also, "Jour. Spec. Phil.," 
vol. iv, p. 219. 



6 Philosophy in Outline. 

finite if it could ever arrive at an environment of a different kind, 
and which, therefore, did not continue it. So Space might be 
finite were it to encounter an environment that was not space. 
But such is clearly seen to be impossible by the direct insight 
which we have into the nature of Space. There can be no object 
or finite space which does not imply space as the condition of the 
existence of what is beyond it. 

§ 12. As a condition of all change, motion, development, and 
manifestation, Time is likewise necessary. The object in time is 
called an event. The event is limited or finite, and has its envi- 
ronment in the form of antecedent and subsequent. The event 
begins or ends in some other event. But a limited time begins in 
a time and ends in a time, so that Time is its own environment, 
and consequently infinite. It is not made finite, but continued by 
its limits because it is self-limited. 

§ 13. Whatever we find to belong to the nature of Time and 
Space we shall find to have correspondences and correlatives in the 
laws of things and events in the world, because things and events 
are conditioned by Space and Time. Hence mathematics, based 
on this insight into Time and Space, gives us, a priori, certain prin- 
ciples which govern things and events. 

§ 14. Experience is thus a complex affair, made up of two ele- 
ments — one element being that furnished by the senses, and the 
other by the mind itself. Time and Space, as conditions of all ex- 
istence in the world, and of all experience, cannot be learned 
from experience. We cannot obtain a knowledge of what is uni- 
versal and necessary from experience, because experience can in- 
form us only that something is, but not that it must be. We ac- 
tually know Time and Space as infinites, and this knowledge is 
positive or affirmative, and not negative. Just as surely as an 
object is made finite by its limit, just so surely is there a ground 
or condition underlying the object and its limit, and making both 
possible ; this ground is infinite. 

§ 15. The scepticism in vogue, called " Agnosticism," rests on 
the denial of the capacity of the mind to conceive the infinite ; 
and, strange to say, this very example of the infinite which we 
find in Space and Time is brought forward to support the doctrine. 
"I can conceive only finite spaces and times, but not space or 
time as a whole, because as wholes they contain all finite spaces 









Philosophy in Outline. 7 

and times." But agnosticism bases its very doctrine on a true 
knowledge of the infinity of time and space. For, unless it knew 
that the environing space was necessarily a repetition of the same 
space over and over again forever, how could it affirm the impos- 
sibility of completing it by successive additions of the environ- 
ment to the limited space? It says in effect : " We cannot know 
Space, because (we know that) its nature implies infinite extent, 
and cannot be reached by successive syntheses." 

Chaptee III. 

Three Stages of Knowing. 

% 16. Space and Time have been considered as the presupposi- 
tions or preconditions in all experience. Three grades of Know- 
ing have been found by analyzing experience. First, there was 
knowledge of the object ; secondly, of the environment ; and, 
thirdly, of the ground or logical condition which rendered the 
object and its environment possible. There was the thing in 
space ; secondly, its relation to an environment of things in space ; 
and, thirdly, there was space. There was likewise the event ; and 
its environment of antecedent and subsequent events, and then 
the underlying logical condition of time. 

§ 17. The first stage of Knowing concentrates its attention upon 
the object, the second upon its relations, and the third on the 
necessary and infinite conditions of its existence. The first stage 
of knowing belongs to the surface of experience, and is very shal- 
low. It regards things as isolated and independent of each other. 
The second stage of experience is much deeper, and takes note of 
the essential dependence of things. They are seen to exist only 
in relation to others upon which they depend. This second stage 
of experience discovers unity and unities in discovering depend- 
ence of one upon another. The third stage of experience discov- 
ers independence and self-relation underlying all dependence and 
relativity. The infinite, or the self-related, underlies the finite and 
relative or dependent. 

§ 18. These three stages of Knowing found in considering the re- 
lation of experience to Time and Space — object, environment, and 
logical condition — these elements are in every act of experience, 
although the environment is not a very clear and distinct element 



8 Philosophy in Outline, 

in the least cultured knowing, and space and time are still more 
obscure. But philosophy, as a higher, special form of reflection, 
investigates the presuppositions or logical conditions of the objects 
and environments of our experience, and makes the third stage of 
experience clear and distinct — far more clear and distinct than the 
first or second stages, because they relate to contingent and change- 
able objects, while the insight into the unchanging nature of Time 
and Space sees the necessary and universal conditions of the exist- 
ence of all phenomena. The third element of experience which 
furnishes these logical conditions is the basis of universal, neces- 
sary, and exhaustive cognitions. 

§ 19. The most rudimentary form of human experience, as it is 
to be found in the case of the child or the savage, contains these 
logical presuppositions, although not as a distinct object of atten- 
tion. Even the lowest human consciousness contains all the ele- 
ments which the philosopher, by special attention, develops and 
systematizes into a body of absolute truth. 

§ 20. Every act of experience contains within it not only a 
knowledge of what is limited and definite, but also a cognition of 
the total possible, or the exhaustive conditions implied or presup- 
posed by the finite object. Hence those vast ideas which we name 
"World, Nature, Universe, Eternity, and the like, instead of being 
mere artificial ideas, or " factitious " ideas, as they have been 
called, 1 are positive and adequate ideas in so far as they relate to 
the general structure of the whole. We know, or may know, the 
logical conditions of the existence of the world far better than we 
know its details. 

All our general ideas, all our concepts, with which we group 
together the multitude of phenomena and cognize them, arise 
from this third stage of experience. It is the partial conscious- 
ness of the logical conditions of phenomena which enter as condi- 
tions of our experience that enables us to rise out of the details 
of the world and grasp them together, and preserve them in bun- 
dles or unities, which we know as classes, species, genera, pro- 
cesses, and relations. These classes and processes we name by 
words. Language is impossible to an animal that cannot analyze 
the complex of his experience so far as to become to some degree 



1 See "Jour. Spec. Phil., 1 ' vol. xvi, p. 386. 



Philosophy in Outline. 9 

conscious of the third element in his experience, the a priori ele- 
ment of logical conditions. 

§ 21. Another most important point to notice is that these 
a priori conditions of experience are both subjective and objective, 
both conditions of experience, and likewise conditions of the 
existence of phenomena. The due consideration of this astonish- 
ing fact leads us to see that, whatever be the things and processes 
of the world, we know that mind as revealed in its a priori nature 
is related to the world as the condition of its existence. All con- 
scious beings in the possession of the conditions of experience — in 
being rational, in short — participate in the principle that gives 
existence to the world, and that principle is reason. Time and 
space condition the existence of the world ; time and space we 
find a priori in the constitution of mind or reason. This sur- 
prising insight which comes upon us as we consider time and space 
is confirmed by all our subsequent philosophical studies. We shall 
find a new confirmation of it in the next chapter, in our study ot 
Causality. 

Chapter IY. 

Cause and Self- Cause. 

§ 22. Let us return to our study of experience and take account 
of another presupposition which is necessary to make experience 
possible, and which is an element far subtler and more potent 
than Space and Time, because it is their logical condition also. 
This deeper principle is Causality. 

(1.) We regard a thing or object as related to its environment as 
an external existing limit, in which case the ground or logical con- 
dition is Space ; or (2) we regard the object as an event or process 
which consists of a series of successive moments with an environ- 
ment of antecedent and subsequent moments ; its ground or presup- 
position is Time ; or (3) we may look upon an object as the recipi- 
ent of influences from its environment, or as itself imparting 
influences to its environment. This is Causality. 

§ 23. The environment and the object relate to each other as 
effect or cause. The environment causes some change in the ob- 
ject, which change is its effect ; or the object as cause reacts on 
the environment and produces some modification in that as its. 



10 Philosophy in Outline. 

effect. The effect is a joint product of this interaction between 
the so-called active and passive factors or coefficients. For both 
are active, although one is relatively passive to the other. 

§ 24. The principle of causality implies both Time and Space. 
In order that a cause shall send a stream of influence toward an 
effect, there must be time for the influence to pass from the one 
to the other. Also the idea of effect implies the existence of an 
object external to the cause, or the utterance of influence, and in 
this space is presupposed. Space and time are in a certain sense 
included in causality as a higher unity. 

§ 25. This principle of causality is so deep a logical condition 
of experience that it conditions even space and time themselves. 
For the externality of the parts of space or the moments of time 
are conditioned upon mutual exclusion. Each now excludes all 
other nows, and is excluded by them. Each part of space 
excludes all other parts of space, and is excluded by them. Any 
portion of space is composed of parts of space, and it is the mutual 
exclusion of these parts that produces and measures the including 
whole. Suppose, for instance, that one of the parts of space al- 
lowed another part to become identical with it, penetrate it, and 
did not exclude it; then, at once, the portion of space to which 
these two parts belonged would shrink by just that amount of 
space which had admitted the other. The portion of space and 
all portions of space are what they are through this exclusion, and 
this exclusion is a pure form of causality, or an utterance of influ- 
ence upon an environment. (This seemingly strange conclusion 
will become more intelligible when the presupposition of cause 
and effect is investigated.) Time itself is another example of the 
same exclusion. The present excludes the past, and is excluded 
by it. Both present and past exclude the future, and are ex- 
cluded by it. Suppose one of these to include the other, then time 
is destroyed ; but, as time is the condition of all manifestation and 
expression, the thought of such mutual inclusion of moments of 
time is impossible. The same implication of causality is found 
in time as in space. 

§ 26. Now, if we examine Causality, we shall see that it again 
presupposes a ground deeper than itself — deeper than itself as 
realized in a cause and an effect separated into independent objects. 
This is the most essential insight to obtain in all philosophy. 



Philosophy in Outline. 11 

(1.) In order that a cause shall send a stream of influence over 
to an effect, it must first separate that portion of influence from 
itself. 

(2.) Self-separation is, then, the fundamental presupposition of 
the action of causality. Unless the cause is a self -separating 
energy, it cannot be conceived as acting on another. The action 
of causality is based on self-activity. 

(3.) Self-activity is called Causa sui to express the fact of its 
relation to causality. It is the infinite form of causality in which 
the cause is its own environment — just as space is the infinite 
condition underlying extended things, and time the infinite condi- 
tion underlying events. Self-activity as Causa sui has the form 
of self-relation, and it is self -relation that characterizes the affirma- 
tive form of the infinite. Self-relation is independence, while 
relation-to-others is dependence. 

§ 27. Causa sui, or self-cause, is, properly speaking, the princi- 
ple, par excellence, of philosophy. It is the principle of life, of 
thought, pf mind — the idea of a creative activity, and hence also 
the basis of theology as well as of philosophy. 

Causa sui, spontaneous origination of activity, or spontaneous 
energy, is the ultimate presupposition underlying all objects, and 
each object of experience. 

§ 28. We have now before us three of the logical conditions or 
presuppositions of existence and experience. 
I. Object — Environment — Space. 
II. Event — Environment — Time. 

III. Effect — Cause — Causa sui. 



Chapter V. 

The Absolute a Personal Reason. 

§ 29. Having defined philosophy as the science of the a priori 
factors or elements of experience, which are necessary conditions of 
existence as well as of experience ; having discussed Space, Time, 
and Causality, and thereby proved and illustrated the reality of 
this kind of knowledge, whose special object is the logical presup- 
positions to be found in all other kinds of knowing, no matter how 
elementary and crude they may be, it is necessary now to consider 



12 Philosophy in Outline. 

the bearing of these a priori ideas upon the question of the exist- 
ence of God. 

We must ask whether it is not possible to have a world in time 
and space without a Creator ; whether we cannot conceive the 
Creator, if there is one, as a blind force. 

§ 30. To experience, the objects of the world are endlessly di- 
verse. Particularity reigns. Each existence is in some way dif- 
ferent from all else. But to philosophy, looking at the a priori 
conditions of experience, there is unity underlying all this diver- 
sity. Space conditions the existence of matter, and every physical 
body must rigidly comply with the geometric laws of space. So ? 
too, all movement and all activity of force must conform to the 
laws of time. Here we have unity of fundamental condition. 
In causality there is absolute unity — self-cause being the source of 
both matter and form in the world. Self -activity is an a priori 
condition, not only of all changes, but also of time and space 
themselves. The very conception of externality and mutual ex- 
clusion involves the act of repulsion or of self-separation such a& 
forms the ultimate element of the idea of cause. 

§ 31. The unity of space as the logical condition of matter, and 
of time as the logical condition of all change and manifestation, 
prove the unity of the world. The mathematical laws which 
formulate the nature of space and time condition the existence of 
all the phenomena in the world, and make them all parts of one 
system, and thus give us the right to speak of the aggregate of 
existence under such names as " world" or " universe." 

This question of the existence of an absolute as Creator or as 
Ruler of the universe hinges on the question of the validity of 
such comprehensive unities as "world" and "universe." If such 
ideas are derived from experience, it is argued that they are ficti- 
tious unities, 1 and do not express positive knowledge, but only 
our ignorance, " our failure to discover, invent, or conceive." For 
we certainly have not made any complete inventory that we may 
call "the universe." 

§ 32. Only because we are able to know the logical conditions 
of experience are we able to speak of the totality of all possible 
experience, and to name it " world " and " universe." Finding 



Jour. Spec. Phil.," vol. xvi, p. 386. 



Philosophy in Outline. 13 

unity in these logical conditions, we predicate it of all particular 
existence, being perfectly assured that nothing will ever exist 
which does not conform to these logical conditions. jSTo extended 
objects will exist or change except according to the conditions of 
space and time. No relations between phenomena will arise ex- 
cept through causality, and all causality will originate in Causa 
€ui, or self- activity. 

All co-ordination is based on identity of species, or genera. 
The Homogeneity of space and time rests on this sort of identity, 
and ultimately all identity of species is based on the identity in- 
volved in Causa sui, or self-cause. 

§ 33. Self-cause, or eternal energy, is the ultimate presupposition 
of all things and events. Here is the necessary ground of the idea 
of God. It is the presupposition of all experience and of all pos- 
sible existence. By the study of the presuppositions of experience 
one becomes certain of the existence of One eternal Energy which 
creates and governs the world. 

How does one know that things are not self-existent already, and 
therefore ill no need of a creator % If this question still remains 
in the mind, it must be answered again and again by referring to 
the necessary unity in the nature of the conditions of existence — 
space, time, and causal influence, based on self-cause. The unity 
of space and the dependence of all matter upon it preclude the 
self-existence of any material body. Each is a part, and depends 
on all the rest. Presuppositions of experience can only be seen 
by reflection upon the conditions of experience. The feeble- 
minded, who cannot analyze their experience nor give careful at- 
tention to its factors, cannot see this necessity. Indeed, few strong 
minds can see these necessary presuppositions at first. But all, 
even the most feeble in intellect, have these presuppositions as an 
element of their experience, whether able to abstract them and 
see them as special objects or not. 

§ 34. Let us vary the mode and manner of expressing this in- 
sight for the sake of additional clearness. First, let us ask what is 
the nature of self-existent being — of independent beings, whether 
there be one or more. 

(1.) It is clear that all beings are dependent or independent, or 
else have, in some way, phases to which both predicates may apply. 

(2.) The dependent being is clearly not a whole or totality ; it 



v 



V 



14 Philosophy in Outline. 

implies something else — some other being on which it depends. 
It cannot depend on a dependent being, although it may stand in 
relation to another dependent being as another link of its depend- 
ence." All dependence implies the independent being as the source 
of support. Take away the independent being, and you remove 
the logical condition of the dependent being, because without 
something to depend upon there can be no dependent being. If 
one suggests a mutual relation of dependent beings, then still the 
whole is independent, and this independence furnishes the ground 
of the dependent parts. 

(3.) The dependent being, or links of being, no matter how nu- 
merous they are, make up one being with the being on which they 
depend and belong to it. 

(4.) All being is, therefore, either independent, or forms a part 
of an independent being. Dependent being can be explained only 
by the independent being from which it receives its nature. 

(5.) The nature or determinations of any being, its marks, prop- 
erties, qualities, or attributes, arise through its own activity, or 
through the activity of another being. 

(6.) If its nature is derived from another, it is a dependent 
being. The independent being is therefore determined only 
through its own activity — it is self-determined. 

(7.) The nature of self-existent beings, whether one or many, is 
therefore self-determination. This result we see is identical with 
that which we found in our investigation of the underlying pre 
supposition of influence or causal relation. There must be self- 
separation, or else no influence can pass over to another object. 
The cause must first act in itself before its energy causes an 
effect in something else. It must therefore be essentially cause 
and effect in itself, or Causa mi, meaning self -cause or self-effect. 

§ 35. (8.) Our conviction, at this stage of the investigation, is, 
therefore, that each and every existence is a self-determined being, 
or else some phase or phenomenon dependent on self-determined 
being. Here we have our principle with which to examine the 
world and judge concerning its beings. Whatever depends on 
space and time, and possesses external existence, in the form of an 
object conditioned by environment, has not the form of self-exist- 
ence, but is necessarily a phase or manifestation of the self-deter- 
mination of some other being. If we are able to discover beings 



Philosophy in Outline, 15 

in the world that manifest self-activity, we shall know that they 
are in possession of independence, at least in degree ; or, in other 
words, that they manifest self-existence. When we have found 
the entire compass of any being in the world, we are certain that 
we have within it the form of self -activity as its essence. 

§ 36. (9.) We shonld note particularly that self-activity, or self- 
determination, which we have found as the original form of all 
beings, is not a simple, empty form of existence, devoid of all 
particularity, but that it involves three important distinctions : 
Self- antithesis of determiner and determined, or of self-active and 
self-passive, or of self as subject of activity and self as object of ac- 
tivity. These distinctions may be otherwise expressed : (a) As the 
primordial form of all particularity; (h) the subject, or self-active, 
or determiner, regarded by itself, is the possibility of any and all 
determination, and is thus the generic or universal and the primor- 
dial form of all that is general or universal ; hence the presupposi- 
tion of all classification ; (c) the unity of these two phases of 
universality and particularity constitutes individuality, and is the 
primordial form of all individuality. 

§ 37. (10.) There is here an error of reflection very prevalent 
in our time, which does not identify these distinctions of universal, 
particular, and individual in the absolute existence, but calls this 
absolute or self-existent being " the unconditioned." It thinks it 
as entirely devoid of conditions, as simply the negation of the 
finite. Hence, it regards the absolute as entirely devoid of dis- 
tinctions. Since there is nothing to think in that which has no 
distinctions, such an absolute is pronounced " unthinkable," incon- 
ceivable, or unknowable. The error in this form of reflection lies 
in the confusion which it makes between the environment and the 
underlying presupposition. It thinks the antithesis of object and 
environment, of object and cause, but fails to ascend to self-limit 
and Causa sui as the ultimate presupposition and logical condition 
of object and environment. 

§ 38. (11.) Plato, in the tenth book of his " Laws," asks, in view 
of this self-activity which he calls " self-movement " : " If we were 
to see this power (self-movement) existing in any earthy, watery, 
or fiery substance — simple or compound — what should we call it % " 
and answers : " I should call the self-moving power Life." Life is 
the name which we give to such manifestations of self-determina- 



16 Philosophy in Outline. 

tion. Aristotle, who is careful not to call this energy u self-move- 
ment," but considers it to be " that which moves others, but is 
unmoved itself," defines it likewise as the principle of life. The 
tenth book of Plato's " Laws " has, perhaps, been the suggestive 
source of most of the thinking on the necessity of the divine as the 
presupposition of the things of the world. Aristotle has treated 
the thought again and again ; but the seventh and eighth books 
of his " Physics " and the celebrated seventh chapter of the elev- 
enth book of his "Metaphysics" have furnished theology the most 
logical form of the intellectual view of this necessity. Aristotle 
in the latter passage gives his grounds for recognizing in this pure 
activity of self-determination God " as an eternal and the best liv- 
ing Being." " He possesses the activity of Reason, of pure think- 
ing and of eternal life, and is always his own object." 

§ 39. The ground of Aristotle's identification of self-determina- 
tion, or of energy which moves but is not moved, with Reason or 
thinking being, becomes clear when we consider that this self-dis- 
tinction which constitutes the nature of self-determination or 
Causa-sui is subject and its own object, and this in its perfect 
form must be self-consciousness, while any lower manifestation of 
self-activity will be recognized as life — that of the plant or of the 
animal. In the plant there is manifestation of life wherein the 
individual seed develops out of itself into a plant and arrives 
again at seeds, but not at the same seed — only at seeds of the same 
species. So the individual plant does not include self-determina- 
tion, but only manifests it as the moving principle of the entire 
process. The mere animal as brute animal manifests self-deter- 
mination more adequately than the plant, for he has feeling and 
locomotion, besides nutrition and reproduction. But as mere ani- 
mal he does not make himself his own object, and hence the 
Causa sui which is manifested in him is not included within his 
consciousness, but is manifested only as species. Man can make 
his feeling in its entirety his object by becoming conscious, not 
only of time, space, and the other presuppositions, but especially 
of self-activity or original first cause, and in this he arrives at the 
knowledge of the Ego and becomes self-conscious. The presup- 
position of man as a developing individuality is the perfect indi- 
viduality of the Absolute Reason, or God. 



Philosophy in Outline. 17 

Chapter VI. 
Philosophy, Theology, and Religion. 

§ 40. Philosophy is not religion, nor a substitute for religion, 
any more than it is art, or a substitute for art. There is a distinc- 
tion, also, between philosophy and theology, although philosophy 
is a necessary constituent of theology. While theology must ne- 
cessarily contain a historical and biographical element, and en- 
deavor to find in that element the manifestation of necessary and 
universal principles, philosophy, on the other hand, devotes itself 
exclusively to the consideration of those universal and necessary 
conditions of existence which are found to exist in experience^ 
not as furnished by experience, bat as logical, a priori conditions 
of experience itself. 

§ 41. Philosophy finds Time, Space, Causality, Self-activity, 
and it arrives, in the consideration of self-activity as the only pos- 
sible basis 'of time, space, and dynamic influence, at the idea of 
God as a necessary being. The ideas of time and space, which 
all conscious beings find as a priori factors of experience, justify 
such general ideas as are expressed by the words u World," " Uni- 
verse," "Nature," " History," "Society," etc., which are regarded 
as factitious or artificial by those who have not noticed that all 
experience possesses, in addition to finite, sensuously present ob- 
jects, also the universal and logical conditions of that experience. 
The idea of self -activity is the deepest of these presuppositions 
which make experience possible, and which make the existence of 
the world possible. 

§ 42. The idea of self-activity is the source of our thought of 
God. If one lacked this idea of self-activity and could not attain 
it, all attempts to teach him theology, or even to reveal to him 
divine truth, would be futile. He could not form in his mind, if 
he could be said to have a mind, the essential characteristic idea 
of God ; he could not think God as a Creator of the world, or as 
Self-Existent apart from the world. If the doctrine were revealed 
and taught to him, and he learned to repeat the words in which it 
is expressed, yet in his consciousness he would conceive only a 
limited effect, a dead result, and no living God. But the try- 
2 



18 Philosophy in Outline. 

pothesis of a consciousness without the idea of self-activity im- 
plicit in it as the presupposition of all its knowing, and especially 
of its self-consciousness, is a mere hypothesis, without possibility 
of being a fact. 

§ 43. A pre-condition of divine revelation is the creation of be- 
ings who can think the idea of self-activity. The idea must be 
involved in knowing as logical condition, although it need not 
become explicit without special reflection. Philosophy is a spe- 
cial investigation directed to theological conditions of existence 
and experience, and so likewise theology and religion are special 
occupations of the soul. The soul must find within itself the idea 
of the divine before it can recognize the divine in any manifesta- 
tion in the external world. 

§ 44. In discovering and defining the a priori ideas in the 
mind, philosophy renders essential service to religion, because it 
brings about certain conviction in regard to the objects which 
religion holds as divine, and conceives as transcending the world 
although it has not yet learned their logical necessity. It imagines, 
perhaps, that the mind can have experience without presuppos- 
ing in its constitution the divine doctrines which it has received 
through tradition. But philosophy may arrive at certainty in 
regard to the first principle, and the origin and destiny of the 
world and man, without making man religious. lie must receive 
the doctrine into his heart — that is the special function of religion. 
To know the doctrine is necessary — that is philosophy and the- 
o-loffy ; to receive it into the heart and make it one's life is religion. 

§ 45. Philosophy has suffered under the imputation of being 
too ambitious — aspiring to " take all knowledge for its province," 
or to usurp the place of religion and destroy the Church. We 
have seen that the mind possesses a priori logical conditions which 
enter experience and render it possible ; we have seen, likewise, 
that the mind, in its first stages of consciousness, does not separate 
these from experience and reflect on them as special objects. It 
does not perceive their regal aspect, nor recognize them as funda- 
mental conditions of existence. Nevertheless, it sees what it sees 
by their means, and may, by special reflection, become conscious 
of their essential relation. But this higher form of reflection is 
preceded by many stages of spiritual education, in which partial 
insight into these a priori ideas is attained. Special phases, par- 



Philosophy in Outline. 19 

ticular aspects of them, are perceived. In the acquirement and use 
of language, in the formation of ethical habits, in the creation and 
appreciation of poetry and art, in the pursuit of science, and es- 
pecially in the experience of the religious life, these a priori pre- 
suppositions appear again and again as essential objects under 
various guises — a sort of masquerade, in which these " Lords of 
Life," as Emerson 1 calls them, pass before the soul. 

§ 46. The knowledge of these a priori elements in experience, 
although a special one, is the most difficult of acquirement. It is 
not a field that can be exhausted any more than the field of mathe- 
matics, or the field of natural science, or that of social science. 
New acquisitions are new tools for greater and greater acquisition. 
We must expect, therefore, that the idea of Self -activity, which we 
have found as the first principle, will yield us new insights into 
the being and destiny of nature and man, so long as we devote 
ourselves to its contemplation. 

Chapter YII. 
' The Triune Nature of God. 

§ 47. The conclusion reached in our time, that the theological 
doctrine of the Trinity is a useless subtlety, may be found alto- 
gether rash, and unwarranted by philosophy. It is true that, w T hile 
it makes distinctions in the divine essence, Theology has often dis- 
claimed the ability to conceive or think them, but it has never 
proved that they were unthinkable. Theology has tried to find 
all of its dogmas in the intellect, and to base them on the nature 
of Reason. Some have been thoroughly demonstrated, others 
have been only partially expounded. In the history of the de- 
velopment of Christian dogmas one will find all the phases and 
aspects of the speculation by which the intellectual insight into 
the Triune nature of God has become a possession of the Church. 

§ 48. In philosophy we shall find that this distinction forms the 
basis of the true theory of the existence of the world, and of 
man's freedom and immortality. Without independence of per- 
sons, and oneness of the persons of G-od, there could not be finite 
temporary existence nor immortal individuals. 



1 See Emerson's sublime essay on "Experience," in which he describes the soul's 
-ascent through five stages of insight. 



20 Philosophy in Outline. 

Leaving this dogmatic statement of results and relations, let us 
consider the necessary inferences involved in the thought of self- 
activity. 

§ 49. Self-activity has been distinguished into determining and 
determined, or active and passive, subject and object of activity. 
We identified the subject as universal, the antithesis between sub- 
ject and object as the particular or special, and the total as indi- 
vidual. These were seen as the primordial forms of the catego- 
ries of Reason — the universal, the particular, and the individual. 

§50. (1.) The self-determined as self is pure active. The self- 
active is vital and living and thinking, and essentially self- 
knowing. 

§51. (2.) It is not adequately expressed as self-active or self- 
knowing, because this involves an activity that makes itself pas- 
sive, and a knowing that knows itself not as subject, but as 
object. 

§ 52. (3.) To act simply to produce passivity within itself is the- 
act of self-annihilation, or of self-contradiction. To know one's 
self as object and not as subject, is also not to know one's self 
truly, but to know what one's self is not. We see, therefore, that 
the explication of self -activity, or self-knowledge, or pure, absolute 
self-consciousness, demands that the self-active shall determine 
itself as self-active, or that the self-conscious shall know itself as 
self-conscious, and that the free shall know itself as a free being. 

§ 53. (4.) It follows, therefore, that independence of persons arises 
in the primordial self-active one. In order to be self-active and self- 
knowing, it is creative, and creates another which is the same as 
itself. In our finite knowing, our thoughts and fancies exist for us,. 
but only subjectively. In the Absolute, their existence as thoughts 
is absolute existence. Hence, knowing and willing are one in God. 
This, indeed, is the ground of explanation used again and again in 
Christian Theology in treating the Trinity. 1 

§ 54. (5.) A first absolute self- activity begets a second indepen- 
dent, free, perfect self-activity. The second, too, is creative — his 
will and knowing are one. In knowing himself, he creates a third 
equal in all respects to himself. 

1 Aquinas, Summa Tlieol., i, q. xxvii, art. iii. : " In Deo sit idem voluntas et intellec- 
ts. " Also, Summa Contra Gentiles, lib. iv, cap. xix : " Una res sint in Deo intellectus et 
voluntas." This is treated fully and explicitly by St. Thomas Aquinas, inasmuch as 



Philosophy in Outline. 21 

' § 55. But the second is begotten, while the first person is unbe- 
gotten. In knowing himself, therefore, the second person makes 
an object of himself not only as he is, but he makes an object also 
of his relation to the first, which is that of being begotten, or de- 
rived from the first. 

§ 56. In the idea of derivation and begetting there is the idea of 
passivity. If the second were only derived and begotten, he were 
only passive. But he has made himself self-active from all eternity. 
The passivity which is implied in derivation has been eternally an- 
nulled, but it is, nevertheless, an element in the self-knowledge of 
the Son, and as an object known comes to exist as created, because 
his knowing is creating;. 

§ 57. In thinking his relation to the first person, he therefore 
creates a world of finite beings, extending from the most passive 
up to the most active. It is a world in which all is process or evo- 
lution — no finite existing absolutely, but only relatively to the 
development of a higher being. All below man pass away and do 
not retain individuality. Man is self-determining as individual, 
and hence /includes his own development within himself as indi- 
vidual, and hence is immortal and free. 

§ 58. (6.) It is the thought of a becoming from passivity to per- 
fect activity that is involved in the recognition of the derivation of 
the second from the first person, and this thought is the basis of 
the creation of the world. All stages of finitude are passed through 
on the way to the creation of man. 

§ 59. The thought of what is merely object — the thought of the 
mere passivity — is the thought of simple externality or Space. 
Space is the thought of one point outside of every other — no par- 
ticipation — simple exclusion — mere objects outside the subject. 
Space is the first thought of the creation, the lowest thought in 
the self -knowing of the divine second person. (The mechanical, 
chemical, and organic phases of nature we shall discuss in another 
•chapter.) 

§ 60. (7.) The Second Person knows himself as eternally ele- 
vated above all finitude and passivity, although his derivation im- 



Christian Theology rests on it. There could be no creation unless intellect and will were 
one in God. Self-knowledge is the origin, first, of the eternally begotten Word, and, 
.secondly, of the Holy Spirit. 



22 Philosophy in Outline. 

plies passivity as a logically prior condition. And as he knows 
his perfection as having this logical prior condition, he knows his 
perfect self as existing as the consummation and summit of Crea- 
tion. Theology calls this a procession, or a double procession. If 
the Second Person could not know the evolution or process out of 
the passive into the active — out of the finite and imperfect into 
the infinite and perfect — then he could not know his derivation 
from the First Person. Then, too, there could be no such eleva- 
tion of the world, no salvation of any of its creatures. 

§ 61. Because the First Person knows the Second Person as 
self-knowing, he knows the self-knowing of the Second, and recog- 
nizes in the perfection of the Second his own perfection ; also, in 
the creation of the Third perfect person by the self-knowing of the 
Second Person, the First Person recognizes his own perfection, so 
that the Third Person proceeds not only from the Second Person- 
but also from the First Person. 

§ 62. The Third perfect Personality is the Holy Spirit that lives 
in the Invisible Church. It is the archetype of all institutions* 
"We recognize a sort of personality in institutions. The State, for 
example, has deliberative, executive, and administrative functions 
— an intellect and a will. What is imperfectly realized in histori- 
cal institutions is perfectly realized in the Eternal and Invisible 
Church, which is composed of innumerable souls, collected from 
innumerable worlds, and all united, not by temporary devices of 
written compacts, or immemorial usages and formalities, but by 
the bond of love or the spirit of Divine Charity and self-sacrifice, 
for the true good of others. The Spirit of this infinite and Eter- 
nal Church is the Holy Spirit — " a procession but not a begotten," 
because it arises or is an eternal involution from the manifold of 
Creation through the Self-Knowledge of the First and Second 
Persons. 

§63. Man as individual progresses or develops by social com- 
bination with his fellow-men, and thence arise institutions of Civ- 
ilization — the family, civil society, the State, the Church. His- 
torical institutions, being finite and having limitations incident to 
organization, are perishable, but their archetype is the invisible 
Church, into which go, or may go, all souls after death. The 
principle of social combination or co-operation is altruism, Charity, 
or Love, the principle which sacrifices self for one's fellow-men. 



Philosophy in Outline, 23 

In that principle alone can perfect organization exist. The Spirit 
of the Invisible Church, the archetype of the Visible Church, and 
of all other institutions of Civilization, is the Third Person of the 
Divine Being, the Spirit of Love and Co-operation organized into 
the greatest reality of the universe. For it includes all souls that 
have lived in the universe from the timeless beginning of the 
consciousness of the Eternal Word. From this view we find the 
world to be the process of evolution of souls, so that this is the 
present, past, or future purpose of each and all stellar bodies. 

§ 64. (9) The first self-active being in its self-knowledge knows 
no passivity, no imperfection, and hence no finite being. The 
world is not to be explained from his self-knowledge except by 
mediation of the Second Person, called the Eternal Word. The 
relation of the First Person is, or may be, expressed, therefore, by 
Justice. Justice returns the deed upon the individual and gives 
each its due. The due of a finite or negative being, whose indi- 
viduality exists through separation and exclusion and negation of 
others, is therefore self-annihilation, and such is the fate of all 
finitude in the thought of pure self-activity, except it is saved 
through the intervention of the thought of the Second Person, 
who thinks his relation to the first as derivation or son ship. But 
the Eternal Word thinks his origination from God eternally as an 
annulment of passivity and isolated material existence, and a rising 
into the perfect unity of the Church. Here we have the form of 
perfect Grace. A perfect being, whose entire activity brings up 
from nothing finite beings and gives them existence and progres- 
sion in order to culminate in man, who can carry out this develop- 
ment by uniting with his fellow-men in social union and ascend 
into the Invisible Church. 

Chapter VIII. 
The True Infinite is Free Energy. 

§ 65. We have already discussed many of the aspects of Expe- 
rience, and have found three distinctions prevailing : (1) object, 
(2) environment, and (3) ground. Experience may be infinite as 
regards the multiplicity of objects which it may learn, or as re- 
gards the continuance of its observations, but there never can be 
an experience of any object that will contradict the logical con- 



24 Philosophy in Outline. 

ditions of experience. Whatever we may know in regard to the 
ground or logical conditions is necessarily true of all existence. 

§ 66. This threefold distinction may be found in the categories 
©f thought. The first of these is Being. Of course, it is impos- 
sible to seize upon words, in any language, which have always the 
same consistent definition to all minds. Only technical terms or 
special symbols can be kept true to one definition. Any general 
word in the language will have one meaning to minds in the first 
stage of consciousness which considers only objects without re- 
lations; another meaning to the second stage of consciousness 
which considers objects only in an environment of relations and 
dependence; a third meaning to the stage of consciousness that 
considers the logical conditions underlying both object and envi- 
ronment. 

§ 67. Being thus has three distinct aspects, according to the 
stage of consciousness which thinks it. Bat common to all the 
meanings or senses in which it is used it has the acceptation of a 
category of the greatest extent and least content of experience; 
it applies to all objects of experience, but expresses none of the 
distinctions of one object from another. Technically, therefore, 
in philosophy, it may be employed to denote the category of the 
first stage of consciousness. The shallowest thinking is least able 
to discriminate distinctions and differences. The most immature 
mind thinks all objects as having being. All objects to it are co- 
ordinate and of equal validity in this respect. The moment we 
begin to observe relations, this co-ordination vanishes and we make 
the terms of experience unequal. This object depends upon that 
object in some respect, and therefore is not co-ordinate, but subor- 
dinate to it. This belongs to that, and is only a manifestation of 
that object's energy or sphere of influence. Here we come to the 
categories of Essence and Cause. 

§ 68. Essence and Cause imply the second stage of conscious- 
ness, in that they express a dualism of object and environment. 
Essence is technically used to express the being on which another 
being depends. Cause expresses still more clearly the same thought 
of dependence. When w T e regard an object as modified through 
its environment, we think the energy which imparts the impulse 
as the essence and the modification effected by it as the manifest 
lation or phenomenon. 



Philosophy in Outline. 25 

- § 69. But, underlying the idea of Cause, as origination of influ- 
ence, there is the idea of self-activity, Causa sui, or .personality, as 
the presupposition of all. These categories — being, essence, and 
personality — reveal to us again, therefore, the three stages of the 
•development of consciousness. 

§ TO. Modern Natural Science sets up the doctrine of the cor- 
relation of forces and the "persistence of force." In the case of 
individual forces — heat, light, electricity, magnetism, attraction of 
gravitation, and cohesion — there is finitude, each force manifest- 
ing itself only when in process of transition into another form of 
force. But there is a ground to all these forces, which is an energy. 
The " persistent fores " is the energy of each force without the 
particular quality of each force. But it is that which originates 
each special force, and that which likewise causes it to lose its 
individuality and pass over into another force. The "persistent 
force" is not a special force, like light, heat, etc., for the special 
forces are in a state of tension against each other, or are merely 
names for different stages of the same energy. The " persist- 
ent force" is an energy that acts, not on another, but only on it- 
self. In all changes and loss of individuality on the part of par- 
ticular forces the "persistent force" abides the same, continually 
emerging from its successive disguises under the mask of particu- 
lar forces. 

§ 71. Persistent force can not, like a special force, act on some- 
thing else, because it is the totality of all forces. All things are 
mere equilibria of forces, and hence things, too, are manifestations 
of the self-activity of " persistent force." Thus natural science 
does not find itself able to avoid thinking self-activity as the 
ground of things and forces. Pure self-activity is mind or con- 
scious being. Any form of Knowing or consciousness differs from 
the relation that particular forces or particular things have to 
each other in the fact that Knowing is an activity which forms 
within itself its other by its own energy. A self- active has duality 
— the self as subject and the self as object. The self as subject is 
out of time and space. The Ego as Ego likewise transcends time 
and space. If it were in time it would change, and could not be 
the unity of the manifold in consciousness. So, too, were it in 
space it would be a multiplicity of points, each external to the 
rest, and hence without unity. The Ego, like the subject of self- 



26 Philosophy in Outline. 

activity, transcends time and space, and is therefore no mere ob- 
ject of nature. 

§ 72. The science of formal Logic states three laws of thought 
which correspond to these three stages of consciousness, although 
they may be looked upon as three statements of the same princi- 
ple. These are the so-called principles of identity, contradiction, 
and excluded middle. A is A, or an object is self -identical, is the 
formula for the principle of identity, and it is very clear that it 
expresses the point of view of the category of Being, or of the 
first stage of consciousness. It ignores all distinction, all rela- 
tion, and hence all environment. 

§ 73. The principle of contradiction states the environment ex- 
plicitly. Its formula is, Not- A is not identical with A, or it is 
impossible that the same thing can at once be and not be, or what 
is contradictory is unthinkable. Here we add in thought to the 
concept of A its contradictory, not- A. We distinguish them, but 
make one of them the limit of the other. We, moreover, assert 
mutual exclusion, and hence the finitude of both. Not- A is the 
formula for the relative or dependent, because it is expressed only 
in terms of something else — something else limited or negated. 
Change A, and you change the extent or compass of not- A. In 
the principle of identity the finitude of the object is not expressed, 
but in the principle of contradiction two mutually limiting spheres 
of being are defined. 

§ 74. The formula for the principle of Excluded Middle tells us 
that A either is or is not, or that of two mutual contradictories we 
can affirm existence of only one. This principle adds the concept 
of totality to that of identity and contradiction, and therefore re- 
lates to the idea of Ground or Logical condition, the third stage 
of consciousness. Looking upon the total sphere, we can reason 
from the existence or non-existence of a part to the existence or 
non-existence of the other parts. It is the principle of the dis- 
junctive judgment. 

§ 75. The principle of sufficient reason, which is added as a 
fourth law of thought to the three already named, if admitted to 
this rank of laws of thought, expresses not only a ground of 
knowledge, but also a ground of being. It means not only that 
we must have a ground for affirming the existence of any being,, 
but that there must be a real ground or reason for the existence of 



Philosophy in Outline. 27 

any being. Understood in this sense, it is the positive statement 
of the principle by which we cognize the logical condition under- 
lying object and environment. " Excluded Middle " is the negative 
statement of this principle, while "Sufficient Reason" is the posi- 
tive statement of it. The former states that u either, or" is true, 
while the latter states that the one is through the other, or that the 
totality is one unity. By it we perceive the necessity of Causa sui y 
or self-activity, as the sufficient reason for any causal action what- 
ever. By it we affirm the truth that all being is grounded in 
energy, or that dynamic existence is the basis of static existence. 1 

§ 76. We observe in these principles the importance of the idea 
of the negative as the basis of the idea of relation. We can call 
the second stage of consciousness the negative stage, because it 
makes so much of the relative. The environment is the negative 
of the object, and its formula is not-A. It is of the utmost impor- 
tance in philosophy to recognize the negative in all forms that it 
assumes. It is the principle of limit, of specialty and particularity, 
hence of all distinction and difference ; it is likewise the principle 
of all contrariety, and hence of essence, force, cause, potentiality, 
and substance. What is most wonderful is that it is the principle 
of life and thinking, only that in these realms it appears as self- 
related. It sounds absurd, or at least pedantic, to hear one speak 
of self-negativity as the principle of mind. But really there is no 
insight possible into self-activity, and the logical conditions of 
experience, without some recognition of the self -negative. Self- 
distinction, as self-negation, is also affirmative, because it is identity 
as well as distinction. 

§ 77. We must see that the categories of experience and the 
world are not based on Being, or even on Essence, but that being 
and essence are based on this negative process of self-relation 
which we recognize as pure energy, Causa sui, or personality.. 
This alone is the root of individuality, independence, and free- 
dom. The idea of God is the unfolding of its complete, posi- 
tive import. 

§ 78. The true Infinite is Freedom. An infinite is defined as 
that which is its own other or environment. But if this separation 
of self from environment is statiaorpassive, the unity is imperfect,. 



1 C. C. Everett's " Science of Thought," p. 236. 



28 Philosophy in Outline. 

and must be supplemented by another. Space is supplemented 
by Time, because its unity is imperfect, a unity in kind, or species, 
of all parts of space, but not a unity of energy in which each part 
is the whole. 

§ 79. In Freedom the self is its own other or environment, in- 
finitely continued or affirmed by itself. Its other, too, is activity 
or energy, and is free, and hence infinite. Therefore it exists for 
itself. But a part of space, although continued by its environ- 
ment, exists not for itself, but for the unity of all space, which 
alone is infinite. Space is infinite, but it does not consist of 
parts that are also self-existent and infinite. Hence the unity of 
all space is not perfect, as before stated. 

Chapter IX. 
Freedom, Fate, Individuality. 

§ 80. The problems of philosophy are perennial. Each indi- 
vidual must solve them for himself when he comes to the age of 
reflection. No number of philosophers can ever " settle" philo- 
sophic questions so that it will not be necessary for each individual 
to think out solutions for himself. Questions of mere fact in 
nature can be " settled " by investigation, so that a mere statement 
suffices to convey the result to a schoolboy. But it is not possible 
to " settle " matters of insight just as we settle matters of fact. A 
truth that requires for its comprehension a certain degree of cult- 
ured power of thought cannot by any possibility be taught as a 
matter of fact to a youth who has not yet arrived at the neces- 
sary stage of thinking. 

§ 81. We recognize this quite readily in the acquirement of 
mathematical truth. Such truth cannot be conveyed to minds 
that will not or cannot grasp the elementary conceptions and make 
the combinations necessary. Only by intellectual energy can 
those truths be seen, and even mathematics has not " settled " any- 
thing for people who have no insight into its demonstrations. 
Philosophic knowing is knowing of presuppositions of existence— 
a knowing of logical conditions of being and experience. It is 
therefore a special kind of knowing that arises from reflection. 
These logical conditions of existence are invisible to the one who 
does not specially reflect upon them. When one sees them at all 



Philosophy in Outline. 29 

he sees that they are necessary elements of experience. It is a 
third stage of knowing, this knowing of logical presuppositions, 
and its insights cannot be seen from the first or second stage of 
knowing. Truths that are " settled " in philosophy may yet seem 
to be impossibilities to the one whose intellectual view is on the 
second stage of knowing. 

h § 82. The truth of freedom or free-will cannot be seen from the 
second stage of knowing, which gets no farther in its conscious- 
ness than the thought of environment. To it, therefore, Fate is 
the highest principle. Again, to the first stage of knowing, what 
seems very clear to the second stage may be a dark enigma. The 
idea of fate is to it inconceivable, because it does not think objects 
as in a state of relativity to their environment. Although all ex- 
perience contains the three elements already pointed out — object, 
environment, and logical presupposition — yet the first stage of 
knowing is distinctly conscious only of the object ; the second stage 
notes chiefly the environment, and thinks things as conditioned by 
necessary relations of dependence, while the third stage of know- 
ing looks especially to the logical presupposition. 

§ 83. Notwithstanding these radically different views of the 
world and its existences, it is not difficult to pass from a lower 
stage to a higher. Any one, whose point of view is so elementary 
as to include the immediate object as the most essential item, may 
be led up to the insight that the environment is most essential by 
calling his attention, step by step, to the essential relations which 
condition the existence of the object. He will soon come to see 
that the object depends on the environment, and will concede that 
the totality of conditions makes that object to be what it is, and 
prevents it from being anything else. This is the standpoint 
of fate : External constraint in the form of the " totality of 
conditions" environs all objects in the world, and makes them 
to be what they are. Any one habituated to observe the essen- 
tial relations or environment of an objectgwill adopt this as a 
final principle until he gets the third point of view — that of 
totality. The underlying logical condition, which is presupposed 
both by the object and its environment, is not a dependent being, 
nor a mere correlative of dependence. It is a totality, and self- 
determined. 

§ 84. The conviction held by those in the first stage of knowing 



30 Philosophy in Outline. 

is that objects all possess self-existence in their immediateness, and 
that all relations are accidental and not essential. The conviction 
of those in the second stage is the relativity of all existence, and 
the omnipotence of fate. The third stage of knowing is the con- 
templation of the form of totality, which, being self-determined, 
is free. Its utterance therefore is : All beings are free beings, or 
else parts or products of free being. 

§85. In the previous chapters of this outline we have consid- 
ered Time and Space as grounds of existence of material things. 
We have considered the principle of Causality as the form in 
which all experience is rendered possible. Looking at its presup- 
position, we have seen that self-activity, or Causa sui, alone makes 
possible any and all influence of one thing upon another. There 
must be self-separation of energy or influence as a condition of its 
transference from the environment to the object, or from any one 
object to another. This self-separation, or self-activity, is the basis 
of causality, and hence the basis of all things and phenomena in 
the world. 

§ S6. Self-activity is freedom. Dependence on another and 
passive recipiency of influences from without signify fate and 
necessity. There can be no real individuality except in the form 
of self-activity or self-determination. That which belongs to some- 
thing else, and exists through the activity of that other being, is 
only a manifestation or phenomenon. All that it is reveals the 
nature of the energy of that other. With only the idea of fate 
or external constraint, and no consciousness of self-activity as the 
ultimate presupposition, the mind is obliged to deny individuality 
even to human beings, and to regard all beings as phenomena. 
Phenomena are syntheses of effects, manifestations of energy, or 
influence, that has originated in some source lying beyond the 
sphere of manifestation. But just as the thought of influence or 
causality involves self-separation or self-activity, so, as a matter of 
course, every special instance of it has the same implication. A 
phenomenon as a manifestation posits or presupposes the exist- 
ence of the pure energy or self-activity whose manifestation it is. 
Dependence, or any form of essential relation, presupposes self- 
existence as that on which the object depends and as that whose 
energy it manifests. 

§ 87. It is impossible, therefore, to think fate or external ne- 



Philosophy in Outline. 31 

cessity as a finality, or, in fact, as existing, except as a result of 
freedom. "All things are necessitated by the totality of condi- 
tions " is the principle of fate ; but its logical condition or presup- 
position is that the totality of conditions is self-conditioned. If 
the totality of conditions contains energy, that energy must be 
self-determining or free. 

§ 88. Necessity or fate presupposes freedom as its ground or 
condition. Hence, if there is anything there is individuality. 
But whether we shall find many individuals in the world, or 
whether the world as a totality forms only one individual, is not 
evident from this principle alone. Being assured of the necessary 
existence of individuality or free self-determination as the form of 
all totalities, 1 we may now look for individualities that shall cor- 
respond to its definition. But with the principle of fate as a final- 
ity we should be obliged to deny freedom to all individualities, 
and explain persons as somehow products of fate. 2 

§89. The fundamental truth is that the first principle is free, 
and that whatever is a totality 3 is free. It is clear that the first 
principle can reveal or manifest itself only in free beings. It 
would follow, too, that creation exists for the development or evo- 
lution of free beings, and that free beings can exist in a state of 
development. 

§ 90. There is change ; change implies that what is real does not 
cover all the possibilities of being. Water, for example, is liquid at 
this moment ; at another moment it may be solid, as ice ; or an elas- 
tic fluid, as steam. It is only one of these states at a time ; one state 
is real and the other two are potential. Were it possible to regard 
the total existence of water as exhausted in these three states, we 
might say that water is only one third real at any given instant 
of time. Were all possibilities or potentialities real at the same 
instant, there could be no change. Here we arrive at the concep- 



1 Totality as here used does not mean quantitative totality, but qualitative — i. e., inde- 
pendent being. 

2 Rowland G. Hazard, in his book on " The Freedom of the Mind in Willing," con- 
chiles that " every being that wills is a creative first cause." He shows that self- 
activity is an essential presupposition of a conscious being possessing will. He has 
very acutely perceived that it is spontaneity or automatism' that is denied by the fatal- 
ists, and that they ignore a most obvious fact of consciousness and observation. 

j^l Totality, or independent whole. 



32 Philosophy in Outline., 

tion of actuality or total being, including all potentialities, whether 
real or otherwise. 1 

One can get btit little ways into the discussion of the great 
question of individuality without making this distinction between 
beings which are part real and part potential and those whose 
potentialities are all real. Self-activities are those which are all 
real ; they are self-realizing beings. Their real side exists through 
their will. But it seems strange at first that there should be two 
kinds of self-activity — the one a perfect Creator, God, and the 
other an imperfect self-realizing being. Actuality is individual, 
while reality may be only a phenomenal manifestation of an indi- 
viduality. The individuality, as self-active, exists as wholly real, 
and gives existence to a product of his will which forms a second 
sphere of reality. This second sphere of reality may be a progres- 
sive realization, and it is here that we have the distinction be- 
tween God and Man, God being perfect also in the second sphere 
of realization, while man is only progressively so. It is man's 
vocation to make himself objective in a second sphere of reality — 
the external world. "When he has accomplished this, then he is 
both subject and object the same. 

§91. To this distinction of reality from actuality we may give 
other names, as, for example, phenomenon and substance. Phe- 
nomenon is the reality which is subject to change through the 
activity of the totality of the process. The phenomenon manifests, 
the nature of the energy which makes the process, that energy be- 
ing always a self-activity. Substance is another name given to 
self-activity to express the phase of abiding and continuance that 
it has. 

§ 92. Freedom is the essential form of the total or self-activity 
because it is independent. But in its self realization it makes a 
second sphere of reality, the products of its acts. 2 In what we 



1 It is important to get this thought, but it is not essential to describe it in the words 
I use. Aristotle uses for the idea here called " actuality " the words energy and en- 
telechy, and sometimes other expressions. Plato used the word idea, and Hegel used 
the words Wirklichkeit and Begriff. 

2 It has been asserted by those who insist on thinking all under the form of a thing 
conditioned by its environment that the will is constrained by the strongest motive — 
that motives render freedom impossible. These fatalists, however, fail to notice the 
distinction between reality and potentiality, and do not consider that motives are' 
potentialities and not realities. Only the mind can see a potentiality ; it creates the 



Philosophy in Outline. 33 

call the actual there is the entire potency which is manifested 
in the fragmentary realities not only in their creation, but also 
in their destruction. Hence it has been said, " What is actual is 
rational," because the actual is a process that annuls all partial 
realities. The more potentialities that are real the nearer is the 
existence to a true individuality. A being in which the entire 
circle of possibilities is realized is an actuality or energy and a 
complete individuality. When but few of its potentialities are 
real, it possesses little individuality ; for when new potentialities 
are realized the being is changed so much that it becomes an- 
other. A being with one of its potentialities real would be as 
unstable of individuality as a pyramid on its apex is unstable of 
position ; a being with all real would be immortal, though it were 
ever so undeveloped and lacking in education and culture. Be- 
fore actuality a being progresses through evolution in which its 
individualities are continually lost. After actuality, permanent 
individuality is attained, and it can progress only through self- 
determination, which shall make for itself a sphere of externality 
identical with its own actuality. In one sense we speak of the 
uncultured man (child or savage) as having unrealized potentiali- 
ties. These potentialities belong to his sphere of second reality, 
which he must create for himself. 

Chapter X. 
The World of Nature and Evolution. 

§ 93. We will now consider the orders of being in nature in the 
light of the idea of creation already developed. Science in our 
time interprets the phases of nature in the light of the principle 
of Evolution. In the " struggle for existence " one order develops 
into^another. When we have seen how a species has arisen from 
a lower one, and how a higher has ascended from it in this strug- 
gle, we have explained it in the spirit of science in our day. Let 

idea of it in itself. A reality is not a motive — a motive is the conception of a desirable 
possibility. After creating the conception, the will may realize it by destroying some 
phase of reality by changing it into the conceived possibility. Here the mind creates 
the motive, and then creates its correspondent reality, and is thus doubly creative in- 
stead of a mere agent or transmitter of the causality of the motive to the deed. Were a 
motive to constrain the will, it would be a case of something that acted before it existed. 

3 



34 Philosophy in Outline. 

us notice that this " struggle for existence " is a manifestation of 
self-determination. The adoption of this point of view marks the 
arrival at an epoch in which the orders of being will be seen as a 
progressive revelation of the divine. 1 How does this idea of Evo- 
lution a^ree with the idea of creation as we have found it in con- 
sidering what follows from Self-activity as the First Principle ? 

§ 94. The self-active is self-determining and self-knowing, sub- 
ject and object. But as object it is also self-knowing and self-de- 
termining. In this we can find as yet no necessity for creation of 
finite beings. The All-perfect knows Himself as all-perfect, and 
His knowing is creating, because will and knowing are one in the 
Absolute, and knowing Himself he creates what is self-knowing, 
self-willing, and hence pure self-activity like Himself a Creator. 
But the second self-activity, in knowing itself, knows it's relation 
to the first — a relation of derivation, and, in knowing it, creates it. 
(See §§ 56 and 57.) 

§ 95. It is in this contemplation by the Second of His deriva- 
tion from the First that we find the ground of creation of a world 
of finite beings. The Second knows himself as pure self-activity, 
but as having made Himself such from a state of mere passivity 
implied in derivation. The state of passivity has been transcended, 
must have been transcended, ever since the First came to self- 
knowledge. Bat as absolute self-knowledge is necessary in the 
first principle, the same has been attained by the second from all 
eternity. 

§ 96. Hence the passivity involved in a derivation from the 
First is only a logical presupposition, and not chronological. It 
being necessary that this logically prior state of passivity should 
be known by the Second Person in recognizing his derivation 
from the First, it follows that He creates a Third, not simply like 
Himself, but as eternally proceeding from the depths of passivity. 

§ 97. The perfect, which is a procession, is eternally perfect, but 
the passive is an ascending series of orders of being in a state of 



1 " A subtle chain of countless rings 
The next unto the farthest brings ; 

And striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form.' 
This is Emerson's statement of the doctrine in 1836. 



Philosophy in Outline. 35 

becoming — an evolution from passivity to self-activity. The be- 
coming or evolution has necessarily the form of time, because 
there are change and decay. It has the form of Space, because 
passivity involves externality or exclusion ; for it (passivity) arises 
only in what is self-active, but is its opposite, and hence excludes 
it. But as this Evolution is as eternal as the self-knowledge of the 
Second Person, the world in time and space is eternal, although 
of necessity its individuals exist only in a state of transition and 
loss of individuality. 

§ 98. Suns and planets have their youth and old age just as 
animals and plants. But just as sure as there is a realm of perish- 
able individuals the end of whose existence is evolution, just so 
sure there must be a realm of immortal individuals ascending out 
of the lower realm of evolution and belonging to a realm wherein 
self-evolution or Education prevails. 1 

§ 99. Vanishing beings, such as belong to the realm of evolution, 
form together what may be called an u Appearance," or manifesta- 
tion of a process. The theory of Evolution interprets the history 
of the individuals by the law of the process which is that of the 
struggle for existence or the struggle for freedom and self-deter- 
mination. This struggle is the school of development of individu- 
ality. There is no individuality where there is no self-activity. 
Individuality rises higher in the scale as it approaches the form of 
knowledge and will. 

§ 100. A compendious survey shows us three orders of being : 
(a) inorganic nature, (h) life realized in plant and animal, (c) self- 
conscious intelligence realized in Man. 

§ 101. There are three principles in the first of these realms, 
progressively realized. The first is Mechanism, or externality 
which is void of an internal bond of unity — space and time, mere 
materiality, mere exclusion and impenetrability in so far as they 
appear in nature, characterize this realm of mechanism. 

§ 102. In so far as there appears dependence of one being on 
another we have a principle which attains its typical form in 
chemical unity. Each manifests another. Gravitation, even, is 
such a manifestation. One body attracted toward another at- 



1 Says Emerson : "It is a sufficient account of that appearance we call the world 
that God will teach a human mind." 



36 Philosophy in Outline. 

tracts that other body in turn. Hence it gains weight and gives 
weight in turn. But in the chemical aspect of being each being 
shows some special relation to complementary beings with which 
it enters into combination in order to realize an ideal unity. An 
acid or a base, for example, has an ideal unity in a salt, and its 
combination with its opposite realizes this ideal unity. In so far 
as one being makes another the means by which it realizes itself 
there is a manifestation of teleology. 

§ 103. Teleology is the third phase of the inorganic, and points 
toward life as its presupposition. Life is that in which every 
part is alike the means and the end for all the other parts — such 
is Kant's definition. Life manifests the phases of universal, par- 
ticular, and individual — in a process in which there are species 
and individual, and self-determination is manifested. In the 
plant the species, only, manifests self-determination, each step 
being the evolution of a new individual out of the old one. But 
in animal life there come feeling and locomotion. On the scale 
of feeling there develops sense-perception as well as representa- 
tion in its two phases of recollection and fancy. 

When the animal progresses beyond recollection and fancy to 
generalization, he becomes immortal as an individual. 

§ 104. Evolution prevails in nature, but it is not evolution of 
the lower to the higher through the unaided might of the lower. 
There is no such unaided might of the lower. The lower order of 
being exists only in the process of evolution into the higher. It 
exists only in transitu, and its individuality is fleeting. The 
Divine Thought of eternal derivation and eternal annulment of 
derivation creates a world of finite beings existing not absolutely, 
but only in a process of evolution. Hence each thing has phe- 
nomenal existence, and not absolute existence; it is relative and 
dependent, and manifests its dependence by change. 

§ 105. If one conceives evolution even as growth of a living 
being, or, still higher, as the process of education of a conscious 
being, still the development does not take place unaided. Only 
the perfect or completely developed can exist in perfect indepen- 
dence. All growing individuals and all finite things exist because 
created and sustained by a Perfect Being. The question that has 
seemed insoluble is, How can a Perfect Being create an imperfect 
one, and for what purpose would he create and sustain such a 



Philosophy in Outline. 37 

being % It is answered by showing that the second Divine Prin- 
ciple recognizes his relation to the First as a begotten, a derivation 
which, in so far as it involves passivity, He has eternally annulled, 
so that He is equal to the First by his own Might of Self-activity. 
§ 106. Creation is a free act, though necessary. It is not com- 
pelled by any external necessity. It is only a logical necessity, 
and not an external necessity. It is a logical necessity that the 
first principle should be Self-active or Self-determining, and hence 
free intelligence. But such logical necessity does not imply or 
involve fate or external constraint. This is a dialectic circle : 
(1) The First is necessarily free, (2) but is therefore necessitated 
and is not free ; (3) hence not being free, it is not necessitated to 
be free, (4) and hence is free in spite of (2). {Logical necessity 
is spoken of in (1) ; fatalistic necessity in (2) and (3) ; (2) and (3) 
cancel each other and leave (1) or (4).) 

Chapter XI. 

The World of Man and Immortality. 

§ 107. We come now to consider the question of the individual 
immortality of man in the light of the principles which we have 
discussed in the previous chapters. Our subject has two phases : 
First, we must inquire what are the conditions of immortality, 
nad what beings in the world, if any, possess such conditions. 
Secondly, we must consider the question in the light of the first 
principle of the world, as we have found it revealed as the supreme 
condition of existence and experience. 

§ 108. How is it possible that in this world of perishable beings 
there can exist an immortal and ever-progressing being ? Without 
the personality of God it would be impossible, because an uncon- 
scious first principle would be incapable of producing conscious 
beings, or, if they were produced, it would overcome them as in- 
congruous and inharmonious elements in its world. It would 
finally draw all back into its image and reduce conscious indi- 
viduality to unconsciousness. In our investigation of the presup- 
positions of experience, we have found Causa sui, or self-activity, 
as the ultimate principle, and we find in the human intellect and 
will what is harmonious with that principle. Let us note that 
Science, in teaching the doctrine of evolution and that of the 



38 Philosophy in Outline. 

struggle for existence, favors the doctrine that intelligence and 
will are the surviving and permanent substance. For intelligence 
and will triumph in the struggle for existence, and prove them- 
selves the goal to which the creation moves. 

§ 109. Space and time and inorganic matter are pervaded by 
the principles of mechanism and chemism. Organic being, whether 
plant or animal, manifests self-activity in various degrees. 

§ 110. The plant possesses assimilation, or the nutritive process. 
It reacts on its environment. It is a real manifestation of indi- 
viduality. Perhaps one would say that the rock, or the waves, or 
the wind has individuality and reacts on its environment. Cer- 
tainly the plant possesses individuality in a less questionable form. 
The action of water, air, and mineral does not avail to assimilate 
other substances into its own form. The plant takes up some 
portion of its environment into itself and stamps on it its own 
form, making it a vegetable cell, and adding it to its own struct- 
ure. It strives to become infinite by absorbing its environment 
into itself. But it cannot conquer all of its environment in this 
way ; it would have to become some world-tree (Yggdrasil) to 
succeed in conquering all of its environment. The infinite, the 
absolute, the self-active, must be its own environment. 

§ 111. The plant form of existence cannot realize self-activity 
except to a limited degree. The portions of its environment which 
it takes up and assimilates, moreover, produce growth or expansion 
in space. This expansion implies separation of parts. The indi- 
viduality of plants is rather of the species than of the particular 
plant. The individuality is in transition, being manifested by the 
growth of new limbs, twigs, leaves, or fruit, sprouting out from the 
old as the first did from the earth. Because the plant is a con- 
stant transition from one individual to another it cannot manifest 
identity except in the species. 

§ 112. In the animal we have feeling and locomotion, and the 
unity is found in the particular animal as well as in the species. 
Feeling implies self- activity, not only in reaction on the environ- 
ment as in the case of nutrition, but in reproducing the impression 
made by the environment within the soul of the animal. Unless 
the animal reproduces for himself the limitation caused by the 
environment there is no perception. The reproduction is accom- 
panied by an unconscious judgment or inference that transfers the 



Philosophy in Outline. 39 

occasion of the feeling to an external world. Thus, time, space, 
and causality, function in feeling or sense-perception, but the sub- 
ject is unconscious of them. The animal sees, hears, tastes, smells, 
or touches the objects of his environment, unconscious that he 
does this by reproducing within himself the shocks made upon his 
senses by them. 

§ 113. This activity of reproduction (sense-perception) is only 
in the presence of the objects. But there is a higher order of re- 
production which is free from the presence of impressions on the 
senses ; this is called representation, and is in two forms — (a) recol- 
lection of former perceptions, and (b) free fancy, in which the soul 
causes to arise within itself by limitation new combinations of 
perceptions recalled, or entirely new objects. Although the ac- 
tivity of representation is a higher form of manifestation of indi- 
viduality, and seems to be quite free from time and place, because 
any former perception may be recalled at pleasure, yet it is still 
inadequate, because the object is a particular image, just as much 
as the perception of any particular object in the world. 

§ 114. The being which perceives or feels is a self-activity in a 
higher sense than is manifested in plant life, but it is not its own 
object in the forms of mere feeling, or sense-perception, or recollec- 
tion, or fancy. Individuality is persistence under change, self- 
preservation in the presence of alien forces, and self-objectivity. 
It is self-determination, or free causal energy, Causa sui. To have 
as object a particular thing, therefore, is not to be conscious of 
individuality, either of one's own or of another's. An individuali- 
ty that does not exist for itself has no personal identity, and hence 
is indifferent to immortality. When the self-activity in reproduc- 
ing an impression perceives at the same time its own freedom or 
causal energy, then it becomes conscious of self. This takes place 
in the recognition of objects as belonging to classes or species. 
Here begins the immortality of the individual. Not before this, 
because the individual is and can be only a self-activity, and can- 
not know himself except as generic. An individual that does not 
recognize individuality is not for itself, and its continuance of ex- 
istence is only for the species and not for its particular self. But 
with the recognition of species and genera there is the recognition of 
self as persistent, although, at first, only in the form of recognizing 
the objects of the world as being specimens of classes and genera. 



40 Philosophy in Outline. 

§ 115. Here begins immortality of the individual, with the rec- 
ognition of individuality in the form of species, and directly it 
manifests itself in the formation of language or the adoption of 
conventional signs to represent classes, processes, and species. If 
any of the higher animals shall be discovered to accompany the 
act of sense-perception by recognition of the objects as examples 
of classes, and to possess conventional means of expressing, not 
particular objects, but general processes and species, then it will 
become necessary to admit the immortality of such individual 
animals. 

§ 116. Above this first form of recognition of species the con- 
scious mind rises to the stage of reflection and the stage of in- 
sight. We have already discussed these stadia as (a) the percep- 
tion of objects, (h) their environment, and (c) their underlying 
presuppositions. It is only in this latter species of knowing that 
the soul comes to recognize itself in its true nature, and it cele- 
brates this fact first in religion as a knowledge of God as Creator 
and Redeemer of the world. 

§ 117. In our study of the idea of self-activity as the highest 
principle we found the explanation of the world and its destiny, 
and this explanation is the necessary complement to the psycho- 
logical investigation of the question of immortality. The Divine 
Self-activity in whom knowing and willing are identical, so that 
His knowing is at the same time a creating of His object, knows 
Himself, but this knowing does not create directly a world of 
finite beings. He knows only Himself and creates or begets His 
own likeness, a perfect being equal to himself, the Second Self- 
activity or Person. 

§ 118. The Second Person, equal in knowing and willing to the 
First, creates a Third equal to Himself, but also creates a world of 
finite creatures in* a process of evolution. Because the Second 
knows his own derivation from the First, wdiich is only a logical 
precondition and not an event in time antedating his perfection 
(for He is eternally-begotten), in knowing it he creates it, and it 
appears as a stream of creation rising in a scale of beings from 
pure passivity up to pure activity. 

§ 119. The inorganic nature, the plant, and the animal do not 
attain true individuality, but man does. Man makes his environ- 
ment into the image of his true self when he puts on the form of 



Philosophy in Outline. 41 

the divine Second Person, as the One who gives Himself freely to 
lift up imperfect beings. As that form is the elevation of the 
finite into participation with Himself, so man's spiritual function 
is the realization of higher selves through institutions — the In 
visible Church, which is formed of all the intelligent beings col- 
lected from all worlds in the universe. The social combination 
of man with man is thus the means of realizing the divine. 

§ 120. The principle of the absolute institution which we call 
the Invisible Church is called divine charity or love. It is the 
missionary spirit, or the spirit of self-sacrifice for the good of 
others. This is the realization in man of the occupation of the 
Creator, and is, therefore, the eternal vocation of man. 

§ 121. If man were not immortal there would be a break in the 
chain of beings that reaches from the pure external and passive up 
to the pure active, and hence the eternal elevation of the Second 
Person into equality with the First Person would be impossible, 
and, therefore, the First Person would not know Himself in the 
Second, and hence there would be no self-activity at all, and con- 
sequently, also, there would be no derivative or finite being. But 
this is impossible. The immortality of man and the necessity of 
intelligent beings on all worlds at some stage of their process is 
manifest from this. 

§ 122. The First divine knowing* creates or begets the Second, 
and sees in it the world of evolution and also the Third divine 
unity of blessed spirits in the Invisible Church as the Holy Spirit. 
The creation of the world is the result of the knowing of the rela- 
tion of the Second to the First Person ; and as all this is within 
the self-knowing of the First, its origin is called a " double proces- 
sion." It is not a genesis like that of the Second which is that of 
one person from another ; but a procession inasmuch as it proceeds 
from the free union of infinitely numerous blessed spirits assuming 
the form of the divine life of the Second Person. 

§ 123. Let one remember that even our finite temporal institu- 
tions possess in some sort a Personality — deliberative and execu- 
tive functions. It could be said that the State possesses a higher 
personality than the individual citizen, for it is not subject to his 
vicissitudes of sleeping and waking, youth and old age, sex, etc. 
But the Invisible Church is the Perfect Archetype of Institutions, 
eternal in duration and infinite in extent, and complete and abso- 



42 Philosophy in Outline. 

lute in its personality. Space and matter exist only that worlds 
may become theatres for the birth and probation of sonls. 

§ 124. The social life of man as it is realized in institutions — 
family, civil society, State, and especially in the Church — is his 
higher spiritual life. Were not human souls immortal as indi- 
viduals, however, there could be no perfection resulting from the 
creation of the World, and hence the Second Divine Person could 
not contemplate in creation his own logical precondition of rising 
from passivity to pure activity ; or, what is the same thing, He 
could not recognize His own derivation from the First ; and this 
would involve also the impossibility of His own ascent to equality 
with the First; and this, too, the impossibility of the perfect self- 
knowledge or self-determination of the First ; and this the denial 
of independent being, and of any being whatsoever. Again, if 
we apply the principle of creation — self-knowing of the Absolute 
is creating — we may say that a world of imperfect beings implies 
the self-recognition of passivity or derivation on the part of the 
Creator. If there were actual present passivity and derivation, 
He could not be a Creator by reason of imperfection which would 
appear as a separation of Will from Intellect, as in Man. But His 
logical precondition of derivation and passivity would imply a 
First Person. Again, these two would imply a perfect final cause 
or end for the creation of imperfect beings which could only be 
reached by the tuition and education of these into a perfect insti- 
tution possessing perfect personality, and through immortal life. 



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ROSENKRANZ'S PEDAGOGICS. 



Orders for ROSENKRANZ'S PEDAGOGICS must be sent to 
D. APPLE 10JST & CO. The price of this work is the same as 
heretofore, although the work has been enlarged by the addition of 
seventy-six pages, in the form of an appendix, containing a para- 
phrase of the first part and an essay on Educational Psychology 
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Price, per copy, .... $1.50. 




CONTENTS OF TEE SIXTEENTH VOLUME. 



Contents op No. 1. 
I. The Philosophy of the Real Presence. 
II. The Philosophy of Prayer and the 
" Prayer Gauge." 

III. The Problem of Philosophy at the 

Present Time. 

IV. Anthropology of Immanu,el Kant 

(Trans.). 
V. Hegel on the Absolute Religion 

(Trans.). 
VI. Hegel's Philosophy of the State 

(Trans.). 
VII. The Hero as Artist. 
VIII. Notes and Discussions. 
IX. Book Notices. 
X. Books Received. 



Contents op No. 2. 
I. Hegel's Four Paradoxes. 
II. Use, Beauty, and Reason. 

III. Dante's Epochs of Culture (Trans.). 

IV. Philosophy in Relation to Agnosti- 

cism and to Religion. 
V. Hegel on the Absolute Religion 

(Trans.). 
VI. Hegel's Philosophy of the State 

(Trans.). 
VII. The Metaphysical Assumption of 

Materialism. 
VIII. Notes and Discussions. 
IX. Book Notices. 
X. Books Received. 



Contents op No. 3. 
I. Philosophy in Relation to its History. 
II. Trentowski on the Sources and Fac- 
ulties of Cognition (Trans.). 
III. The Pantheism of Spinoza. 
TV. Hegel on the Absolute Religion 

(Trans.). 
V. The Idea of the Home. 
VI. The Chaldean Oracles (Reprint). 
VII. Use, Beauty, Reason. 
VIII. Mephistopheles. 
IX. Notes and Discussions. 
X. Books Received. 



Contents op No. 4. 
I. Fate and Freedom. 
II. Hegel on the Absolute Religion 
(Trans.). 

III. A General Analysis of Mind. 

IV. On some Idols or Factitious Unities. 
V. Kant's Anthropology (Trans.). 

VI. Trentowski on the Sources and Fac- 
ulties of Cognition (Trans.). 
VII. Notes and Discussions. 
VIII. Book Notices. 
IX. Index to Volume XVI. 



